


'Tis of Thee

by unicornsandbutane



Category: Team Fortress 2
Genre: Historical, Light Angst, M/M, Mild Sexual Content
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-07
Updated: 2015-02-07
Packaged: 2018-03-10 20:55:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 900
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3303182
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/unicornsandbutane/pseuds/unicornsandbutane
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Short fic about the Soldier’s motivations. Warning, might make you feel unecessarily patriotic, even if you aren’t American.</p>
            </blockquote>





	'Tis of Thee

**Author's Note:**

  * For [your_bro_joe](https://archiveofourown.org/users/your_bro_joe/gifts).



Jane Doe is a man of very strong convictions. It is perhaps very American of him to think that if you work long enough, try hard enough, and believe strong enough, you can do anything. You can be anything. That is American Freedom, to Mister Jane Doe.

 

It is the American Dream: to come from nowhere and rise to greatness.

 

But, he has no such grand desires, no quest for fame nor fortune. He does not even dream of a white picket fence, a dog in the yard and 1.5 children. He wants only to rise above all others so he can come crashing down on their heads, guns blazing.

In this land where you can be anything (and indeed he has been most everything— a lawyer, an exorcist, a tour guide for the houses of famous people) he believes himself to be only one thing: a Soldier. He believes he was put here on this Earth by the Heavenly Father for one purpose. The good Lord made him an American for a reason, and as they say, “In God We Trust”.

 

He exists to protect that great land to which he was born, and in whose sun-kissed cradle he was rocked. He exists to defend the wheat fields of his grandfather’s grandfather’s pride, the dusty prairies of his mother’s and father’s youth, the orchards with their bounties of fruit, which his family picked to get along. He exists for those purple mountains’ majesties, for those beautiful spacious skies. And when America the Beautiful is threatened— be it by the poisonous seeds of discontent overseas, promising to leech like a weed the good, the free, from all nations of the world; or, by the tyranny of a monopolized economy belonging entirely to Reliable Excavation and Demolition— he will fight.

 

So, it is particularly galling to him to love a man like Tavish DeGroot.

 

Tavish is not an American. He never took a citizenship test, and can’t even remember half the words to Yankee Doodle. He’s in many ways undisciplined, and he’s always in dire need of a respectable shave and a haircut, even after being blown to bits.

 

But, he loves his momma, and that’s as American as apple pie, Jane thinks. He loves her and bought her a big chunk of property in New Mexico, where her flash cotton would dry instantly in the arid desert air. Jane would do something like that for his momma, if he had any idea where she was.

 

Helpfully, the Scout pointed out that the framed photo of the Soldier and his family is actually a promotional image for The Sound of Music, featuring Julie Andrews as Maria von Trapp, with an image of the Soldier taped in among the von Trapp children. “But isn’t my momma beautiful?” the Soldier had said. He loves his momma, and remembers her long fingers, freckled hands, and tiny wrists reaching for plums, peaches, apples, and oranges in orchards across the Western states. He remembers her back, in a blue cotton shirt, with the sun beating down on it as she bent after lettuce, after strawberries, after garlic and artichokes. He remembers her wide hat perched defiantly on her head, but he can’t seem to remember her face.

 

He’s deeply jealous of Tavish, in a way, because of that. Jane has listened to countless heavily-accented tales of the lives and deeds of the Scotsman’s illustrious family, and has had basically nothing with which to retort. There are a few stories about the WWI vet to whom his family rented a room, back on the farm, before they all had to pack up and leave. Some of them are fairly outlandish, and if Tavish suspects that they are in any part fabricated, he hasn’t said anything. Bless him.

 

Damn, but the man’s employers— they get in the way of the whole operation! Once or twice Tavish made reference to Romeo and Juliet, and said that Jane could be Juliet since he already had “a name like a— a name that starts with a J,” and Jane replied that Tavish could be Juliet because he was already wearing a dress. Then they bickered and wrestled and fought and brawled until Jane licked blood from Tavish’s lip where his bleeding nose had gone unchecked and then they tussled in a different direction. They rolled and scratched and bit, they writhed and stroked and kissed, their stubble caught and their sweat mingled and soaked into the couch. 

 

And that’s just how it goes, with them: it all runs so high. He’d thought for a moment that they were meant to be together— it was a moment in the middle of his rendition of the Star Spangled Banner, as scheduled at 0500 hours. It was just when he got to the bridge: “And the rockets’ red glare, the bombs bursting in air” that he realized, it was right there in the National Anthem, like a prediction from the book of Revelations.

 

It all went to Hell, sure, but he’d been to Hell and back again, only at the time they’d called it Poland. And now it’s… Well. Things are different now. And they’re not on opposing teams anymore. And Jane does not know how to deal with that. He doesn’t have to fight anymore, for what he wants, and he isn’t sure how to reconcile with that.

 

He’ll probably fight, anyway.

**Author's Note:**

> Written for thegreenpact on tumblr. Hope you enjoyed! If you did, more can be found on my tumblr, under the same username!


End file.
